Marketing, as we know it, is dead. In fact, it’s been dead for a while. Bill Lee declared it in 2012 in a Harvard Business Review article. That’s cause for celebration! Let’s be honest, who wants to be ‘marketed’ to anymore? No one.

If I had a company I wouldn’t have a marketing department. Not only that, I would eliminate the word ‘marketing’ altogether.

If you use LinkedIn regularly you’ve probably heard of the phrase ‘social selling’. Let’s look at what social selling means (or doesn’t mean) before we move on.

Social selling doesn’t mean selling stuff on social media. It’s not referring to social media ads or any kind of post that says ‘buy now’ or ‘shop now’.

Social selling does means using social media as a tool to engage with your sales prospects online. Basically, ‘social selling’ is how everyone should be using LinkedIn – networking (online) with contacts. ‘Online schmoozing’ as one of my training course delegates phrased it nicely the other day.

I use LinkedIn as an example because LinekedIn is the biggest B2B social network, meaning it’s the most effective and appropriate platform for social selling. However theoretically, this can be done on any social network where your sales prospects may be hanging out. Twitter, for example, would be no.2 on the list if indeed your sales prospects are active on Twitter.